at her new contract. She read the clause detailing her yearly salary. Either her pay as the Child Welfare officer had truly represented the law enforcement agency’s contempt of the post, or the officers at Homicide were grossly overpaid. She would be earning three times the amount she’d been paid in Welfare.
She considered all she would have been able to achieve if the money had been directed at her office, and not at the fat cats upstairs. Then again, she supposed, someone had to catch the killers.
She read through the details of her new apartment overlooking Nehru park. It sounded fantastic: three air-conditioned rooms, fully furnished, the building patrolled by security guards. It was a far cry from the sultry, one-room apartment she had now in a poor district of the city prone to burglary. She considered the luxury of a three-room apartment, and then felt a sudden pang of guilt.
She began the quick job of clearing her effects from the desk. They filled a small plastic bag: a stylus and an antique biro pen, an old softscreen recording from her childhood and an effigy of Ganesh, the elephant god, which her mother had given her years ago. She no longer believed in anything like that, but it was her only reminder of her mother. She decided to keep these things at her new apartment, now that she could be assured of security.
She stood and looked around the room. One thing caught her eye. She walked over to the wall and knelt to examine the pix. A small girl with jet-black bangs and frightened eyes stared out at her. On the tag-line beneath the pix was the computer code and a name: Sita Mackendrick.
Rana slipped the pix into her pocket and took the elevator to the eighth floor.
* * * *
3
After ten days in space, enduring cramped living conditions and consuming recycled food and drink, a leave period on Earth was like parole in paradise.
Bennett drove from the spaceport on the perimeter of Los Angeles and took the highway into the desert. The shuttle had touched down in the early hours, and it was still a couple of hours until dawn. The road stretched away beneath the swollen lantern of the full moon, the tarmac laced with luminescents so that it glowed green in the night. In an age of draconian energy conservation, luminous road surfaces were a means of doing away with the expensive street-lighting of old. Seen from space, as the terminator swept across the Americas, the rising sun illuminated the roads that crossed the western seaboard like the veins on the brow of an old but healthy patriarch.
Bennett accelerated, enjoying the cool air on his face. He sipped occasionally from a carton of fresh orange juice and thought about the near miss in orbit. All things considered, his extended leave would compensate for the carpeting and/or fine he could expect on his return to the station in ten days. As he drove, he considered renegotiating his contract in favour of more leave on Earth. He even entertained the fantasy of changing jobs, looking for something a little more varied.
Two hours later he passed Mojave Town, where his father was hospitalised and Julia worked as a landscape designer. Constructed piecemeal at the end of the last century by eco-freaks dreaming of an environmentally friendly society, its population had been augmented over the years by an exodus of well-to-do home-workers, artists, computer specialists and on-line business people. In the light of the moon, multi-level domes glistened like agglomerated soap bubbles, interspersed with oasis gardens, trees and lakes, and tall masts bearing solar arrays.
Bennett’s habitat dome was situated twenty kilometres further along the highway. From the veranda of his dome, Mojave Town was a blur in the distance, and his nearest neighbour was ten kays away. He was surrounded by the soothing silence of the desert, his only company the occasional patrolling condor or scavenging jackal.
He pulled off the
She considered all she would have been able to achieve if the money had been directed at her office, and not at the fat cats upstairs. Then again, she supposed, someone had to catch the killers.
She read through the details of her new apartment overlooking Nehru park. It sounded fantastic: three air-conditioned rooms, fully furnished, the building patrolled by security guards. It was a far cry from the sultry, one-room apartment she had now in a poor district of the city prone to burglary. She considered the luxury of a three-room apartment, and then felt a sudden pang of guilt.
She began the quick job of clearing her effects from the desk. They filled a small plastic bag: a stylus and an antique biro pen, an old softscreen recording from her childhood and an effigy of Ganesh, the elephant god, which her mother had given her years ago. She no longer believed in anything like that, but it was her only reminder of her mother. She decided to keep these things at her new apartment, now that she could be assured of security.
She stood and looked around the room. One thing caught her eye. She walked over to the wall and knelt to examine the pix. A small girl with jet-black bangs and frightened eyes stared out at her. On the tag-line beneath the pix was the computer code and a name: Sita Mackendrick.
Rana slipped the pix into her pocket and took the elevator to the eighth floor.
* * * *
3
After ten days in space, enduring cramped living conditions and consuming recycled food and drink, a leave period on Earth was like parole in paradise.
Bennett drove from the spaceport on the perimeter of Los Angeles and took the highway into the desert. The shuttle had touched down in the early hours, and it was still a couple of hours until dawn. The road stretched away beneath the swollen lantern of the full moon, the tarmac laced with luminescents so that it glowed green in the night. In an age of draconian energy conservation, luminous road surfaces were a means of doing away with the expensive street-lighting of old. Seen from space, as the terminator swept across the Americas, the rising sun illuminated the roads that crossed the western seaboard like the veins on the brow of an old but healthy patriarch.
Bennett accelerated, enjoying the cool air on his face. He sipped occasionally from a carton of fresh orange juice and thought about the near miss in orbit. All things considered, his extended leave would compensate for the carpeting and/or fine he could expect on his return to the station in ten days. As he drove, he considered renegotiating his contract in favour of more leave on Earth. He even entertained the fantasy of changing jobs, looking for something a little more varied.
Two hours later he passed Mojave Town, where his father was hospitalised and Julia worked as a landscape designer. Constructed piecemeal at the end of the last century by eco-freaks dreaming of an environmentally friendly society, its population had been augmented over the years by an exodus of well-to-do home-workers, artists, computer specialists and on-line business people. In the light of the moon, multi-level domes glistened like agglomerated soap bubbles, interspersed with oasis gardens, trees and lakes, and tall masts bearing solar arrays.
Bennett’s habitat dome was situated twenty kilometres further along the highway. From the veranda of his dome, Mojave Town was a blur in the distance, and his nearest neighbour was ten kays away. He was surrounded by the soothing silence of the desert, his only company the occasional patrolling condor or scavenging jackal.
He pulled off the
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